Recently, business travel landed me in Las Vegas, Sin City. I found myself driving from the airport late at night, right down the Strip. What a beautiful, overwhelming spectacle of people and colored lights! With the windows up, it felt like being at the bottom of a beautiful coral sea.
My rental car radio came pre-tuned to a Christian radio station. Though I am a Christian, I never listen to Christian radio, because it felt odd, and I didn’t think the music could compare to regular rock or Sinatra Sirius Satellite Radio. Too tired to change the station, I let it play.
As I continued my long, slow drive down the strip, almost on sensory overload from the lights and people, a strange feeling came over me. The Christian radio music started to feel like oxygen inside my car, as I motored along at the bottom of this strange ocean. Even more, the colors started to seem more ephemeral, almost translucent, as the radio message became more real. These pleasure seekers became more and more trivial in my mind, the dazzling billboards, just pretty pictures, and the music, not the sights, more powerful.
The “reality” of the Strip became transient, frail, comical; the simple music and testament on the radio becoming more and more real, and important, and nourishing as I drove on through the throng. It occurred to me that all I saw, all the devotion to mildly entertaining diversions mattered very little. Instead, the message on the radio sustained and informed all I saw around me. I heard the testimony of a Jew who found Christ; I heard the powerful sounds of “My God is an Awesome God”; I turned it up even louder.
Then I saw, just a block or so off the strip, a church, of all things. Yes, an outpost planted right in the heart of this headquarters for all things non-Christian. I knew already that Terry Fator, a devout Christian, succeeded in selling out the Mirage with his show, right on this very strip. I knew that Donnie and Marie, devoted Christian Mormons, also presented a successful show on the Strip. I later found out that somebody posted a billboard on the northern entrance to Las Vegas that read: “Lust is the path Death.” James 1:10.
All of it helped me realize that perception can create a new reality. Not only is all that glitters gold not gold, but that dark and light may not be what they seem. The words of the apostle Paul seemed to fit so well:
“But you brothers, are not in darkness so that this day should surprise you like a thief. You are all sons of the light and the day. We do not belong to the night or to the darkness.” (1Thessolinians 5:4-6) As I drove in that car in the dark of night, I was bathed in the light, but not the neon light of the Strip, but the Light to which I belonged.
Copyright 2014 David J. Carr